Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Nønsun- Good Old Evil

Lviv, Ukraine’s Nønsun plays a style of doom metal mixed
liberally with drone, sludge and modern post-metal. As the years have progressed, the meanings of these
aforementioned genres have come to denote an assortment of things, and,
seemingly in answer to that fact, this band, on points throughout its 48-minute Good Old
Evil “demo,” manages to cover most of them.

“Jesus’ Age,” after a beginning blast of noise and feedback,
lumbers into a doom metal plod that’s anchored by vocalist Goatooth’s
full-throated roar. Droning noise rushes back over the song, like the ocean
reclaiming the coast, but after roughly a minute guitars, drums and vocals
re-enter the song with a devastating, YOB-style heaviness

,
complete with bluesy stoner metal soloing that is undeniably indebted to that band's sound. The
push-pull between drone and metal continues, with long stretches of both
commingling beside one another. Out of the final stretch of metal, the drums
and guitars begin to pick up speed for a bashing, almost punk section that
collapses into molasses-drenched doom and feedback.

In addition to the expected heaviness and passages of enveloping noise and feedback, some surprising bits of melody find their way onto the album. Moments like the second half of "Rain Have Mercy," with its elegiac-sounding riffs and soloing and spoke-sung vocals, reveal
how far-reaching Nønsun’s sound is
within its chosen genres. Though less representative than “Jesus’ Age” of what Nønsun
does most, “Rain Have Mercy” might be the best track to introduce the average
listener to exactly what the band can
do. Though I love how huge and angry the former is, there's a transfixing emotional nuance to the latter that draws me to it individually, even if I don't have the time for a listen to all 48 minutes of the demo.Nønsun’s
strengths, as mentioned above, are in the way it fits together the extreme
influences that encompass its style. It follows, then, that Good Old Evil’s
weakest point is the nearly 7-minute rolling drone that is “Message of Nihil
Carried by the Waves of the Big Bang,” which contains little-to-no genre mixing
and only the barest changes in tone or mood. As with other drone and noise
compositions on extreme punk and metal records, the emotional flatness of “Message”
belies the peaks to which these genres can be carried by veteran practitioners.

After the droning of “Message,”
closing track “Forgotten is What Never Was” makes a slow transition back into
doom metal, beginning with noise and piano and working up to an ancestral
stomp, out of which only occasionally bubbles growls or chanted vocals. Little
more than a mesmerizing exercise, the 11 minutes of “Forgotten is What Never
Was” feel longer than the 18 of “Jesus’ Age,’ and while its slow, atmospheric progression makes it a stronger piece of
music than the drone work that precedes it, it joins that work in being part of
the weaker second half of what is otherwise an excellent first release.

Overall, this is a band with a ton of promise. The impressive amalgam of extreme genres (on both the metal and noise sides of that spectrum) represented on the first half of the release, if reigned in with a slightly tighter compositional leash and carried over the final two tracks, would have made the word "demo" completely unnecessary here and elevated the band from "awesome, can't wait to hear how they improve next time" to a plain old "that's awesome."

Stream Good Old Evilbelow and/or download it for free from Nønsun's Bandcamp. [Note: The band sent me a download of the album.]